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On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

Paperback, 422 pages

Published April 22nd 2014 by Broadway Books (first published June 2012)

edition language: English

genre: Mystery, Thriller, Adult

My Thoughts

What are you thinking, Amy? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

Nick and Amy Dunne are one fucked up couple

I know that this book has lots of twists with wicked characters, both main female and main male character. So I kinda prepared myself to not fall into one of them or believe what they or one of them say. And I really did try to guess and see everything they told me so that I won’t be that surprised when I face those twists.

But the thing is the way Gillian Flynn wrote was so damn believable I cannot help not to fall to the characters. So in some part I felt sorry for Amy and really, truly, honestly hate Nick. And in another part I felt the opposite. It was just so weird I can’t decide which one I most love or hate. And at the same time the twists were still surprising, even after my friend told spoiler to me. So yeah…this is just that good!

I also really liked the characters. The two different POV made me see them as very different characters. And they play their role well, I have love to hate and hate to love relationship with them along the story. I hate Nick for what he did in their marriage while at the same time I can see (and understand, though am disagree) why he did it. And so does with Amy, I understand the reason she did what she did, and at the same time I think she’s crazy-manipulative woman. I know this might sound crazy and weird but I admired her, especially in part two. She’s smart, manipulative and cunning. I liked her POV much more than Nick’s because her POV can deceive me and kept my mind thinking and guessing of the story.

At the same time, I didn’t quite like her in last few chapters of part two. I felt like it wasn’t Amy’s POV that I admire in first chapters of part two. It was like she turned into indifferent character. She isn’t that cunning anymore and rather silly and unprepared than a smart and thinking ahead woman. She’s just another case of rich girl who doesn’t know what to do outside her comfort zone. And the result was I felt like the story drag on, before it backs on track in part three.

All in all, as my first experience of Gillian Flynn book, I won’t forget Amy and Nick story easily. And they won’t be the only characters I read from Ms. Flynn. Now I’m gonna buy and read her previous books, for sure.

An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?

Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

ebook, 416 pages

Published June 10th 2014 by Greenwillow Books

edition language: English

series: The Murder Complex

genre: Dystopia, Thriller, Romance, Young Adult

My Thoughts

This is another disappointing dystopian book that attracts me with awesome cover and interesting blurb in the first place. I know I should’ve learn my lesson by now but who can resist that bloody eye-catching cover? Not me, unfortunately.

1. The setting. This book reminds me of Wither by Lauren DiStefano, another dystopian book where there isn’t much clarity in the setting. I need to know how far Meadow’s world takes place from now, because it can determine how advance their technology is and the experiment that her mother did. What happen with Zephyr and The Murder Complex need a very advance technology which I think quite impossible happens in just a couple of years, or even in a few decades. But I feel like it takes place not too far from our time now. How is it possible? And then, it takes place in Florida, I assume the dystopian happens in the US, how about other countries? Are they still exist or not? Again, it determines the main reason The Murder Complex exists. There isn’t any explanation about how and why that dytopian world happens either or the pre-Fall as the characters called. I.didn’t.buy.it

2. The characters. I’m not that impressed with both Meadow and Zephyr. Meadow is a bad-ass heroine. I love bad-ass heroine. But in some part she’s quite naive for a person who claims has been trained to survive for her whole life. And Zephyr, as a dangerous killer machine, he’s nothing compare to Meadow. So if he’s dangerous what does make her? I think he isn’t as dangerous as he supposed to be. There also part when everything seems too easy and too coincidences. I.didn’t.buy.them.either.

3. I wonder can I have a dystopian story without 16 years old characters whose have to face the test/trial kind of thing? I know in real life, in our present time, in some countries 16 years old means can take a test in order to get driving license. But it doesn’t mean that in the future, in dystopian world, it turns out to be a nightmare test, right? Don’t get me wrong, I love The Hunger Games and Legend series but after so many trials/tests in dystopian books, it’s just like the same old new story. It doesn’t that interesting anymore.

4. The Insta-love. What’s wrong with giving time for the characters to fall in love? I don’t find it’s appealing reading characters who declare their love only within days after they met for the first time. I barely know the characters but in only a few pages, within hours in their time, they have already known that they’re in love, feels like they know each other forever, and can’t live without each other. Well…again I.don’t.buy.it.

5. There are a lot of (sort of) foul languages here. I personally don’t mind with it. But it just feels ridiculous reading new one when it doesn’t sound like foul language. Maybe it’s created to make the story feels in the future. Language, just like human, is changing. What exist now might not exist in the future, I get that. The thing is when bitch, bastard and hell can survive from the extinction, why didn’t shit, fuck and butthead? Why didn’t make up all of the foul language or don’t change it at all if it sounds ridiculous. So here I got flux instead of fuck, skitz to replace shit and chumhead is a new word for butthead. There are also a lot of words/terms that don’t explain what all those mean.

As the blurb mentioned this book is action-packed, blood-soaked story. Yes, it’s indeed full of action and blood-soaked scenes. Maybe it’s the only thing that true from the story. However, I want something more than that. I want to believe that what I read is believable with reasonable reason and so much clarity that I didn’t have to question it, though I have to admit that the idea of the story is quite interesting and I liked the twists. Still it couldn’t make me buy it.

Since I’m kinda confused with all the terms/words that don’t have any explanation. I try to understand it in my own description. Here they are:

ChumHead = Butthead
Creds = Dollar; A currency
Dark Time = Curfew
Essential = A very important person; A VVIP
Flux = Fuck
A Graver = A riffraff
The Initiative = (some kind of ) The government
Leeches = The military
Night Siren = Alarm signal
Perimeter = The border, wall that surrounds the Shallows and (maybe) separate the Shallows from other place/countries.
Pin = Chip
Plague = Some kind of disease
Pulse = Electricity; Power-current
Rations = Amount of food and drink for the citizen
Sellout = An institution/agent which is under the Leeches’s authority
Shallows = A place where the story takes place
Skitz = Shit
Stars = Just a random word, (might be) similar with skitz but in positive meaning

He followed her because he wanted to own her. She trusted him because she wanted excitement. There’s a saying that curiosity can kill … but Valerian Kimble is beginning to learn that satisfaction might just be worse.

Fourteen-year-old Valerian lives in an age where antiheroes and bad boys are portrayed as the romantic ideal, and good guys are passe and boring. So when Gavin Mecozzi, the school’s brilliant but twisted loner, begins to show an interest in her after a chance meeting in a pet store, Val is intrigued. He’s charming and poetic and makes her feel things that she thought were only possible in books–

Fear.

Because somebody is stalking Val. Somebody who wants to hurt her. Own her. Possess her. Maybe even kill her.

As her meetings with Gavin unravel into a more complex and frightening relationship, Val can’t help but wonder if the new boy in her life is her depraved and obsessive stalker.

And whether he’s capable of murder.

Time is running out.

Kindle Edition, 165 pages

Published: November 29th 2012 by Amazon Digital Services

Edition language: English

Series: Horrorscape

Genre: Thriller, Young Adult

My Thoughts

Before I read this book, I didn’t read reviews or anything regarding of this book aside its blurb. So I didn’t know and expect much about it. First couple chapters, I think this is quite an odd story and the way Val describes her love for animals is kind of bored me. And then it’s hard for me to picture her that she is fourteen years old. I think she’s too young and sometimes she seems too mature than her age while other time I can’t feel her at all. But the more I read it, I think the clearer I get why Ms. Campbell wrote her story and characters that way. In the end I understand Val story better than what I thought before I read it.

I don’t know why but this book reminds me of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. There isn’t one single scene that similar to it, yet I got Twilight vibe here and there while I read this book. Well…I can assure you there isn’t any dangerous paranormal characters here, they are all human but human can be dangerous too, right?

This is where the suspense takes part. It can make me wondering about who the bad guy is and when I think I can guess who it is, I wish that I was wrong, though at the same time it’s so obvious who it is. I think it’s because I mostly read about those kind of “bad” guy who are mostly romanticized it becomes acceptable heroes in most YA books I read nowadays. That’s what I liked most about this book. It doesn’t contain with those kind of hero. Once he acts wrong, he is indeed wrong, no matter what his reason is. And no need to romanticized the creepy thing he does, just because he’s attracted to the heroine.

All in all, I really liked this book but there are also things I’m not sure about. So I think I’m going to save my star for its sequels because I surely need to read it.

Result: 3 out of 5 stars

Favorite quotes:

“If she was mean, it was because she’d learned that she had to be, and not by choice.”

“It was harder to tell with humans, which was what made them so distinct from other animals. Sometimes the nice ones could look mean, and sometimes the mean ones could look nice. And sometimes it was impossible to tell at all. “